Sorry for the late notice - but I just found out there's a Visual Studio 2005 training course being offered online which has extra capacity. If you're interested in the sessions below, please sign up by March 25th.

We are costing the amount of work required to port the J# WFC functionality to 64-bit. The WFC functionality was built to provide a smooth upgrade path from J++ to J#.

If you are using WFC with J# and your application will eventually require 64-bit support, please email me - briankel at microsoft dot com. Please include details of your 64-bit usage scenario. Also, if you're using J# or JLCA and would like to join my customer list (who I semi-regularly poll for product planning inquiries) feel free to drop me a line as well. Tell me a bit about your application and its architecture in your email.

Soma just posted a blog entry about J# and JLCA that I thought was pretty on-target with the direction I see J# and the JLCA headed. As product manager for our Java migration tools, people are always questioning our dedication to J#. The first reason might be because of our history with J++; but J# is independently developed by Microsoft with no Sun intellectual property, whereas J++ was a joint venture. When things went south with Sun, we had to stop working on J++ and will eventually have to stop supporting it. But J# is very different since it's not a joint venture with Sun. I'll spare all the legal details... <g>

But the other reason people question our commitment to J# is that J# will never capture the same market share that C# and VB have. It's here for us to attract Java developers to the .NET Framework by providing a language and business logic functionality that they are already familiar with. Since many of these developers may also go to C#, and C# is also attracting a lot of C/C++ developers who want to work with managed code (Of course C/C++ also supports managed code but that's a whole other topic) we simply will never have the developer share that C# does. But it's still a very strategic language in Microsoft's offerings. Java is our #1 competitor in the application development space, so it only makes sense that we would provide the Java language as an entry point for developers who want to check out our platform. So are we committed? You bet. We've got some great features being added to J# in Visual Studio 2005 and more planned for Orcas.

It's also nice to see Soma recognizing our MVP's who were just added to our Dev Center page. Those guys are true rock stars in my book! Talk about passion for the community! I still don't know what "Namaste" means when Soma signs his blog entries, but I hope to find out soon... <g>

XNA Studio. I know some of the guys on this team and have met with them about their vision. This should be HUGE for the video game development industry. Which, as a developer tools marketing guy who spends most of his free time playing video games, this is a dream come true!